Page 18 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
It was the hint of censure she could hear in his voice that did for her control. It snapped like a badly frayed rope. The cauldron bubbled over and everything she was feeling poured through her like boiling lava before she could even think to stop it.
‘I’ve done nothingbutserve the people these past two weeks,’ she said hotly, while trying to keep her voice down and resisting the urge to jab him in the shoulder with her finger. ‘Do you know how many patronage requests I’ve received this evening? Twenty-eight. And I’ll take all of them on if that’s what’s required. I’ll play the part of the adoring consort and continue to defend you to the hilt. I’ll dance with you and shake a million hands and do and be whatever you need. But every now and then, just for the teensiest-tiniest moment, whatIneed is a break.’
The warm air crackled with electricity, as if a storm had abruptly struck. Their gazes locked and held. She didn’t know what hers was doing—firing daggers at him most likely—but his was dark, glittering, inscrutable.
Her throat was tight. Her heart thumped hard and fast as the seconds thundered by. She seemed to have rendered him speechless. What could he be thinking? Was he as horrified by her dramatic outburst as she suddenly was? Now it was out of her system, she felt ice-cold and shaky. Forget the faint flicker of affinity she’d had for her parents a moment ago. The shocking realisation that by allowing her emotions to overspill so violently she’d behaved exactly like them was battering her on all sides. Her head was spinning so fast she feared she was about to throw up.
But she couldn’t lose it again. Not out here, in public, when one phone with a camera had the potential to destroy everything they were trying to achieve. Or anywhere. Even once was one time too many. She would not go down the road that led to chaos and heartbreak for all involved. So she took a deep breath and swallowed down the lump of mortification and dismay that was lodged in her throat.
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, because an eruption of such hideous passion was not what either of them expected of her. ‘That was totally uncalled for.’
‘The pressure is intense, isn’t it?’
Her head shot up.What?Where was the remonstration she deserved? The unequivocal displeasure at her loss of composure?
Forgetting for a moment the horror of completely losing control like that, of revealing her true feelings for once, Sofia searched Ivo’s face and saw that he no longer looked annoyed and disapproving. In fact, an unexpected glimmer of sympathy flared in his eyes, and it knocked the breath from her lungs. He’d never allowed her to glimpse the man behind the crown before. He’d never revealed even a hint of vulnerability. And she’d nevereverimagined that she might not be in this alone.
‘It is,’ she said, the fireball of tension leaving her body in such an enormous rush that she went dizzy. What a relief he understood. What a relief he’d identified why she’d been so wound up in the first place.
‘I forget I’ve had nearly thirty-five years to get used to it.’
‘Whereas I’ve had little more than a month.’
‘Quite.’ He ran a hand along the strong line of his jaw, back and forth across the faint hint of stubble, slowly, mesmerising her, and then he nodded, as if he’d come to a decision. ‘I don’t think a short delay would make too much of a difference.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘So I’ll see you inside in say, fifteen minutes?’
‘Oh, I’m going nowhere,’ he said, seeming to press himself further into the balustrade. ‘I’m staying right here.’
Sofia’s heart lurched and then began to race. No. That couldn’t happen. How would she be able to pull herself together with him by her side playing havoc with her senses? She required space, dammit. Solitude. Dealing with the fallout of having behaved like her parents was going to take time. As was trying to figure out what their shared moment of understanding, that brief emotional connection, might mean for their relationship. ‘There’s no need for that.’
‘I think there is.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t risk you going nuclear again. What if you take off and disappear into the night?’
She stifled a shudder at the thought of it. ‘I won’t,’ she assured him—and herself—with every drop of conviction she possessed. ‘That urge has passed. Truly. I’ll be fine on my own.’
‘You won’t be fine on your own,’ he countered in a tone that brooked no argument, the one she perversely found so attractive. ‘You won’t have any peace at all. As you observed, everyone wants a piece of you. You’ll be approached and disturbed. My presence by your side will prevent that. We’ll be left alone. It will be assumed we’re having a romantic moment.’
A romantic moment? Imagine that. Imagine being glad of each other’s company and taking comfort in it. Imagine knowing that someone was looking out for you and protecting you for real and you weren’t alone any more.
‘Besides, if I walked away now, when you’re clearly agitated, what would people think?’
At Ivo’s timely reminder about the optics of this little tableau, the heady dream Sofia had conjured up shattered, and she landed back in reality with a bump.
‘Tell me something,’ she said, not remotely irritated that he’d ruined her fantasy, but actuallygratefulhe had, because if he hadn’t she might have been in serious danger of getting carried away by it.
‘What?’
